1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to systems, methods, and computer program products for expediting a level of expertise of a topic, and more particularly to expediting a level of expertise of a topic based on the activity of a plurality of users as that activity relates to content.
2. Description of the Related Art
Corporations have a constant need for increasing the expertise of their employees in an efficient manner in order to improve enterprise productivity and profitability. The learning needed to increase expertise can be either formal (e.g., structured classroom or online courses) or informal (e.g., self-directed learning activities such as reading articles). On the one hand, there is a long and rich tradition of providing formal training solutions, but they are largely inflexible and require the learners to follow a fixed curriculum path, which is difficult if not impossible to customize to suit the needs and interests of any particular individual.
On the other hand, despite some conventional attempts at providing a solution to this problem, few focus on providing structured support to the informal learning that takes place naturally as part of everyday business. When it comes to informal learning, the burden is placed on individual learners as individual learners must still select suitable learning materials from the vast amount of available content, thereby resulting in an extremely difficult task that often results in the learners giving up before they reach their target level of expertise. Moreover, those learners who do not give up are given no feedback regarding a comparison between their current expertise level and their target level of expertise. As a result, learners are often left questioning their progress (if any), thereby resulting in even further burnout.
Furthermore, individual learners may not know who the domain experts are and hence may resort to asking questions to any number of individuals. As a result, it is possible that the individual learner will receive responses from those who may not be recognized as an expert in a field relevant to the individual learner's question. In such a case, the individual learner can become further confused by inaccurate responses to their questions.
Therefore, there is a need for learning systems, methods and computer program products that are customizable, flexible, able to provide feedback regarding a comparison between an expertise of an individual learner and that of their target level of expertise, and able to detect potential experts for a set of users.